While at their peak the original CSI and CSI: Miami were better than CSI: New York has ever been, across its five seasons the Gary Sinise Manhattan set series has definitely been the most reliable of the forensics dramas. Saying that it’s a safe bet might sounds like I’m damning it with faint praise, but I’m really not. It’s a great show, with Gary Sinise in particular a fantastic force at the head over a very good cast. With CSI: Miami you may end up wanting to punch David Caruso and CSI Vegas sometimes gets too gloomy for its own good, but CSI: New York is always entertaining, managing to mix the drama with the somewhat OTT crimes to great effect.

At the end of Season 4 we left Sinise’s Mac Taylor kidnapped by a dangerous bank robber, and so this season opens with the rest of the team trying to find him and then track down the criminal. After that things get back to normal with Mac, Stella, Sheldon, Lindsay and Danny using all their scientific knowhow to catch the killers of New York. In these first 12 episodes of Season 5, they have to tackle everything from radiation poisonings to people getting murdered over a missing flash drive. We also have to start of a story that runs through the season involving Stella investigating the smuggling of ancient Greek antiquities, and Mac is in danger once more when two other people with the same name as him are murdered and he has to try and stop any more or his namesakes getting bumped off. It’s also nice that in this season A.J. Buckley as tech Adam Ross gets an expanded role, as he’s very amusing and bring a stronger sense of humour to the show.

While both CSI and CSI: Miami were showing signs of weakness by their fifth season, CSI: New York is still an excellent show. In fact it was probably the best of the CSI shows for this 2008-2009 season.

Rather annoyingly, there are absolutely no special features on the three disc, 12 episode set, which is a bit rubbish. Presumably all the Season 5 featurettes and other goodies will come with the Part 2 box set that’s due out on September 7th, but you get bugger all in this release, which is pretty annoying. At least the episodes on offer are uniformly entertaining, from one of the most reliable show on the box.

Overall Verdict: 12 very entertaining episodes from an extremely reliable show, but where are the special feature.